The Corporal Poem by David Lewis Paget

The History Reconstruction Arm
Of the Ministry of Offence,
Had called me in for a meeting
With the Chiefs of Recompense,
They said they needed an agent,
Prepared to risk his all,
‘We have the technology waiting
Now we need to change the world.'

The shelves in the shops were empty
People fought for a loaf of bread,
Butter was unobtainable
And so was cheese, they said,
The ration cards have been in place
For fifty years or more,
The money was spent on the army, sent
To fight this terrible war.

Thank God it hasn't gone nuclear,
But they said that it never would,
The threat of retaliation kept
The armies where they stood,
The Reds are commanding the channel coast
Right down to the Pyrenees.
And Britain is standing alone again
Though they've brought us to our knees.

The Fascists in Whitechapel
With their propaganda rule,
While down in Brixham Prison
Lie the hopes and dreams of fools,
They shot the Liberal Poets and
Wiped out the socialist left,
They say what's good for the country
Is the strong arm of the west!

The States are a bristling fortress
But they'll never come to our aid,
They say whatever they owed us
Was in 14-18 paid,
They've colonised the Pacific
Made New Zealand just a State,
Australia's turned their backs on us
And left us to our fate.

‘We've studied where it all went wrong, '
Said General Angus Pryde,
‘The Treaty of Rapallo is where
The hopes for peace had died,
That treaty, with the Russians helped
The Germans to re-arm,
Under the cloak of Soviet help,
That sounded the alarm! '

‘The man was Walter Rathenau
Who signed that evil form,
Sold Germany to the communists
That's where this war was born,
The Reds then flooded Germany,
The Reds took over France,
It was only the fact of the channel coast
That halted their advance.'

‘This Rathenau was the leader when
The war was first declared,
The whole of history hinged on him
And caught us unprepared,
So what we're now proposing is
The thing you need to do,
Go back, assassinate Rathenau
In 1922.'

‘Before or after the treaty's signed? '
I asked the generals there,
They each looked, one at the other, said
They didn't really care.
‘To stop the Communist Party taking
Over the German mind,
We'd rather a swing to the right, ' they said,
‘And the rest would fall in line.'

‘That would leave a mighty hole to fill,
The German leader's seat,
Who do you think would take his place
If I shot him in the street? '
‘There's only an Austrian Corporal has
The language, and the style,
But what would a Schicklgruber do?
Would the Germans still say ‘Heil? ' '

17 October 2012